Jaco spun and flipped about, firing off stray beams of blaster bolts at the chests of every Frieza Army member or just an alien looking to get on the army's good graces. A muscular, cerulean-skinned thumb-headed strongman raised a wrench to whack the Galactic Patrolman just as he landed on his own two feet, ready to regain some balance before unleashing his barrage of justice again.
Chayote's own Ki blast carried the poor mechanic away, ripping him through the door leading right to the command center of the station. Jaco sighed easier and checked on the drive in his utility belt before beginning to scan the area for more mooseheads to blast at.
"Okay, I think we've dodged the subject long enough…" Tights pressed her arms to her thighs with a vexed expression. "We're not getting any closer to escaping from this stupid station!"
"You'd think that these bozos would be more grateful, we've saved their station from a virus that might have frozen it in space, stolen all its data and then transmitted it to every ship that contacted it, doing the same to them…" Jaco sighed while nervously turning to the corridor through which the enemy that even a full-blooded Saiyan feared might have burst through at any time.
"What did you say?!" Chayote turned to Jaco. "That's what the virus does, why didn't you say it any sooner!?"
"Well, yeah, it begins downloading every pichi-pichi picture off the space-net onto the system until the system overloads. I've seen hard drives that bloat to dozen times their size and that are pulsing with heat over the size of the raunchiness…" Jaco scratched his cheek with a goofy smile.
"Shit!" Chayote slammed the control panel and ground her teeth. "Goddamn it!" she cursed while her Ki came out rushing forth from her body in an intense aura. She didn't even care that she was wasting energy at this point.
"What's wrong?" Jaco shook his head, curious.
"I'll have to confront the enemy… You two idiots listen and listen good. Take that drive, sneak onto their ship and jam it into anyplace you can stuff a drive into." Chayote clenched her fist and tried to settle down the butterflies that sensing the approaching enemy caused her to experience.
"Wait, what?" Tights clapped her eyelashes a pair of times.
"We need my ship! It's got the radar that can track the Ultimate Dragon Balls and three Ultimate Dragon Balls on top of that. Under no circumstances can we lose my ship. The whole Earth will be doomed if that happens." Chayote turned for the door and stretched her limbs, cracking her knuckles and testing the flexibility of her neck a couple of times.
"You did want to get out of here, didn't you?" Jaco looked at Tights and grabbed her hand, dragging her off to the elevator leading to the service floor, which they could have then used to ascend to the entryway through one of the service shafts if the map displayed on the barely functional computer panel told the truth.
Tights looked at Chayote with a worried expression, the Saiyan felt the tiny earpiece that the human gave her before Jaco dragged her away, one that stayed hidden underneath her blond hair all this time. Then, just like that, the pair disappeared. An explosion resonated at the other end of the corridor, soon filling the hallway and the room that branched off to multiple other hallways leading to several key locations aboard the station with soldiers.
The Saiyan wasn't at all surprised to see that these were no Frieza Army soldiers. They wore black, skin-tight bodysuits with white boots and chest-plates, the shoulders were protected with a design similar to the more advanced models of Saiyan armor, the ones that didn't use the large shoulder-pads. They all wore white helmets covering all of their heads but their mouths with orange visors for eyes.
They were all trash, all of them might have been equal to a Saibaman in strength except for the ugly dwarf in the middle. This guy was for real. He was the source of the crazy power level, Chayote could tell. She'd get massacred if she fought him for real, though he wouldn't be able to go wild in such a sensitive location. If he unleashed too much of his power the whole station might have gone off to hell, killing off his whole platoon and himself along with them, unless he was of a species that could breathe in space.
"Ki-ki-ki… A Saiyan…" the dwarf cackled. "Say, who's been causing the ruckus aboard this station?"
He was looking for information, not trouble. That was good, that meant that Chayote could have bought a little bit more time against him. She wasn't sure how much time Jaco would need to infect this bastard's ship with the virus and leave him stranded here but if she could waste his time by talking, that would help her survive through the ordeal.
"It's over, we got them." Chayote shrugged. "A Galactic Patrolman had boarded the station, things got pretty wild when we found out but he was alone and we were many, more importantly, we were much stronger."
"I see… Ki-ki-ki…" the dwarf cackled again. It felt infuriating to be frightened and humbled by someone of such a dumbass personality and build. A future member of the Frieza Army and an integral asset to Lord Frieza's cause reduced to cowering in front of a laughing imbecile just because his power level was several times that of hers.
"You guys aren't Frieza Army either. Who are you and what are you doing here?" Chayote took a mock step forward to try and intimidate the little bastard. She didn't see any scouters amongst them and she was absolutely sure that none of them could sense Ki, they might not have even known that she was weaker than them and by how much exactly.
"Ki-ki-ki… I am Medamatcha of Lord Slug's commanders. Right now, we don't want any trouble with the Frieza Army, Saiyan. Our priestesses have picked up traces of Namekian magic aboard this station, a great deal of it, in fact. We're looking for something that belongs to Lord Slug, if you'd help us find it, we'd be on our way." Medamatcha smirked.
He didn't intend on being this peaceful. His malicious intentions leaked out with that smile, the shrimp was a poor liar on top. The more time Chayote spent talking with this fool, the more she wanted to sabotage her own success and charge at him, she had spent so much time on Earth learning how to overcome great differences in power levels and yet the last time she fought someone with a power level greater than hers it didn't go too well. Plus, she was sure that the ratio by which Medamatcha's power surpassed hers was far greater than her odds of winning against Demon King Piccolo were.
"Namekian magic? Who's to say? Namekians don't leave their planet much this century, haven't you heard?" Chayote filtered her words through her teeth, feeling the urge to start swinging her fists swelling up.
"Well, if you don't know… Ki-ki-ki… I guess we've got no use of you anymore…" Medamatcha smirked and let his soldiers drown him out. Chayote growled and extended her hand, the blast she fired off did in a pair of Slug's soldiers but the rest opened fire on her. On top of facing a much more powerful commander, she had to still deal with the platoon that he commanded as well.
There wasn't much room to move around in, but Chayote was competing with mere blaster bolts here, the soldiers threw their guns around in each direction, trying to track the blitzing movements of their speedy Saiyan opponent. At this point, Chayote wouldn't have minded having left some of the station's inhabitants capable of defending their own station against the invading force.
The Saiyan dashed into the close range, disabling the possibility for the Slug's soldiers to use their long-range weaponry. One blow was all that most of them needed and the Saiyan plowed through the army with the utmost brutality, punching through the armor and vitals alike, breaking or removing limbs with mere kicks and breaking bodies with slams, slowing down only in between moves for a fraction of a second to calculate the best next action. The martial arts training served her well, her body was almost moving all by itself.
"If only Jaco wasn't such a pathetic wimp, if only I had known about those priestesses earlier, I could have asked him to kill those bitches while in Slug's ship…" Chayote thought to herself while leaving a caved-in face of a soldier with a vicious elbow strike. Medamatcha was a horrible commander, anyone else would have seen that leaving their soldiers to fight the Saiyan was hopeless and that they had no option of effectively fending her off. At this point, he was letting them die for his own amusement.
Oh well, Chayote was happy to oblige. Soon the only standing bodies in the administration room were the Saiyan and the armored dwarf commander of Lord Slug's forces. Chayote had never heard of a Lord Slug nor did she care. Although, given the fact that he had some crazy-powerful commanders on par with Lord Frieza's own as well as the fact that they were looking for the Dragon Balls, she should have paid them more mind.
"Why are you looking for the Ultimate Dragon Balls?" Chayote broke Medamatcha's concentration with a straighter question than she should have been able to fire off his way.
"Ultimate… Dragon Balls? So it's some different sort of Dragon Balls then?" Medamatcha smirked. "Ki-ki-ki… You must be the one who brought them onto this station, correct?
This was good, all she needed was a few more minutes, to keep the little dwarf talking but… It was as if Chayote wasn't in control of her own body, she charged at him with a left cross but the dwarf was no longer where he was supposed to. The Saiyan turned around with a cross-armed block and absorbed most of the diving kick from the shorty.
Something warm and suspiciously blood-tasting came up when Chayote hit the floor and she could feel having dented the surface a great deal. Her lungs burnt up when she drew in a breath, all of this damage was just from a blocked strike? What if she failed to react in time, what if she hadn't read the exact move that the dwarf was going to make before she even threw the first punch? Likely her spine would have been snapped like a twig and she'd been disposed of like the helpless and useless plastic gun that she was…
"Ki-ki-ki… You can fight, it seems." Medamatcha looked amused by his failure to dispose of the enemy with the first exchange of blows. "But you're quite slow, or maybe just weak altogether… Ki-ki-ki!"
"Tsk… Eat shit, shrimp!" Chayote cursed and disappeared into thin air. The wild and bulged out eyes of the green-skinned commander raced across the administration room. Purple bolts of energy appeared in his hands and he threw them around wildly, blasting at doorways and walls, careful not to inflict too much damage to the hull.
He was just shooting blasts randomly at this point. His continuous energy bullets were just a gambling attempt to hit that which he couldn't track due to his failure to sense Ki. Be as strong and fast as he may, he was tracking the whole battle just with his eyes alone and that wouldn't have done it.
Chayote threw a wayward kick to the dwarf's face. She could hear the cracking thud that was as loud as a lightning bolt. Medamatcha didn't even budge! The dwarf only smiled as if he was too dumb to even realize that he's been hit. Before he could get any bright ideas to counterattack, Chayote backflipped back to her initial location. Even though she wasn't tired at all, the humbling experience of the enemy just shrugging off her blows made her kneel to the ground.
"I bet the others will only find one Dragon Ball each but I'll bring Lord Slug all the ones you have. Ki-ki-ki… I guess I can't kill you until you've told me where you have them. I wonder if you're keeping them on your body, it would be a hassle to search all of the ships in the station…" Medamatcha wondered, revealing a possible reason why Chayote was still alive at this point.
"Too bad, maybe you shouldn't have let me kill your soldiers." Chayote stood back up and took a fighting stance.
"Oh, but it was so beautiful to look at…" Medamatcha cackled with a high-pitched voice. "Anyway, you're too fragile for me to hit you. I'll have to extract the information a different way, it seems."
The green shrimp crossed its arms in front of it and began glowing with blinding yellow gleams. Despite the intense concentration of Ki in all of his body, Chayote didn't feel his Ki swelling up at all. It wasn't like an explosive wave attack at all, despite looking like one from the first glance. In fact, it was quite possible… That he was growing weaker!
When the glowing ceased, Medamatcha and Chayote were no longer alone. The undergrown commander of Lord Slug's forces stood behind a quartet of his clones that seemed even more mindless and doltish than the original. Medamatcha licked his lips.
"Go, my little Medas, make this Saiyan give me all the information I need!" Medamatcha cackled out a command and the four Medas listened, they jumped at Chayote all at once with blinding speed and ferocity. They weren't like Medamatcha at all, they lacked any restraint or need to preserve Chayote's life that the Saiyan could have abused.
One microsecond they were standing still, the other Chayote felt her hands under a tight lock behind her back while a dull thud that nearly knocked her unconscious outright sent her crouching to the floor. The Meda that knocked her down from behind stepped over her head and pressed a fair bit. It felt just scary enough that her head would burst at any time for Chayote to feel worried, the pain was too much, she couldn't restrain screaming anymore.
"How many of these Ultimate Dragon Balls do you have?" Medamatcha wondered but Chayote had her mouth shut, figuratively, at least, in the literal sense, she was too busy screaming her lungs out from the perpetual feel of the head-splitting pain.
That wasn't the last of her troubles though. Just when Chayote thought it couldn't be any worse, she was brought back to the severity of her current situation by piercing sensations in her shoulders. Were those two, little remaining clones biting her!? When Dracula Man bit her it felt very similar, just like Dracula Man, Chayote felt her strength leaving her body at an alarming rate. This felt worse though. Dracula Man felt like he was depriving one's body of blood, it felt relieving almost. The Medas seemed to just rip the strength out with undue brutality, despite them just sucking on her Ki, like blood, it felt like being ripped to shreds and eaten alive.
"How many Dragon Balls, where are you keeping them, how are you finding them?" Medamatcha continued to bark questions while Chayote struggled and screamed but it all felt so vain and pointless. It only took one Meda sitting on her, restraining her hands and another one stepping over her head to make herself feel so hopelessly trapped…
If she spoke now, the Earth was doomed. And so, she screamed on, her own pain was the best solace that burnt away all traces of the temptation to tell this pathetic and misshapen shrimp anything of value.
More than half of her strength felt like it was already gone. Her vision was beginning to fade and the dreaded feeling of weakness took over the Saiyan's body. She was too weak again, this whole time she's trained and grew stronger, both body and soul, the edge she was meant to surpass had changed, elevated somewhat, but yet another freaky, green shrimp was about to kill her and she felt powerless to stop that… Rage was beginning to build up in Chayote's heart, she had to let it all go, it would only last a heartbeat but burning bright before going out felt more meaningful than just dying humbled and drained like some neutered animal.
"Saiyan! We've uploaded the virus, get out of there!" Jaco's voice boomed in her ear. While it did sound vague, ethereal and inspirational, the slim, noodle-armed alien was the last face she'd see inspiring her to keep on fighting in her darkest moment so it must have been real – he was speaking to her through the earpiece that Tights had handed her.
Finding a new purpose to all this rage, Chayote's screams that were beginning to fade and become muzzled echoed through the station again, but these were no screams of desperation and torment, these were the roars of a Saiyan, letting out a proud battle cry as their rage swelled up into something tangible. A last-ditch effort burst of Ki that sent the Medas flying off of her, though more shaken than hurt.
"Ki-ki-ki… What's that?" Medamatcha wondered.
Chayote didn't have much time. Just one heartbeat, that would be all the time that this exploding rage had bought her. If she was fighting this bastard to the death, she'd use it to get a couple of good licks in before the Medas overpowered her and drained her dead-dry but this time. This time she had to struggle, she had to survive at all costs so that the Earth could be saved.
"Solar Fist!" Chayote roared out, raising her hands to her head and closing her eyes. An intense beam of sunlight, just a shape that Chayote's swelling up Ki had taken, blinded both the Medas and Medamatcha while the Saiyan took off. Everything was dark and red from the alarms the sounds of which had become the new norm, and which Chayote could barely even hear anymore due to that fact. Like a wild, chased animal she fled on sheer instinct, no forethought, the next time she took a breath was when she gripped the handle of Dr. Brief's ship and planted her kicked rear on the cushion. Mashing through the buttons to get her out of here and as far away as possible.
By all means, she should have blasted this station from outside. Left that disgusting shrimp wheezing for air in the cold vacuum of space but… No. This wouldn't be the way that he'd die in. He'd be left stranded on this station until his superiors picked him up, he'd have to admit that he was beaten by a Saiyan one-third of his strength and he'd have to suffer the consequences and, if Lord Slug still felt merciful, Chayote would bash his brains in when they next met.
More importantly, who the hell was Lord Slug and why was he looking for the Dragon Balls!?